Morning sickness?

Seems it gets harder and harder to have a peaceful morning walk - one where nobody comes to dump rubbish, no loose giganto-dog chases as, nobody gives us lip, and so on. Oh well, we try to look for the sweet spots!

What have we been doing?

This blog has been a little quiet. That is because of numerous holidays :). We are just hanging out and all is well.

Spring has sprung:

The dog looks better straight:

Sen AD JDX

In the post today! Very proud of my girl:

 

5 x 0 (Q) = Sen, WA State JDX Champion + AD + JDX titles!!!

Sen seems to have the ability to pull things off when most wanted. I might be frustrated with her inconsistency and passion for taking off at high speed, but there are moments of brilliance! I got to see a few such moments at this year's WA State Agility Championships. Sen's State's achievements:

 

-  2014 JDX State Champion (200) - TADAA! 

-  1st place Qs in all three JDX heats!

 

Here's the video for the first heat (speed 5.04 m/s!!!) and the finals run:

 

Great as these results were, the remaining 4 classes were are collection of DQs. Still I got a lesson in frustration - these all felt bad at the time, but when watching the videos later, each run contained some great work. Clearly things are going forward and that is the main thing, AND MOST WEAVE POLES WERE CLEANLY DONE (about time...). The States were only her third competition for this year, and lack of competitions certainly shows in her ability to concentrate. I noticed that she is better on tight courses than easier courses. Someone hypothesised that this is because she cannot get up a full head of stream on harder courses and enter the crazed zone - maybe this is true. At least the stats for this year are so far better than those for 2013:

 

There was one downside to the States. Our awesome agility pals Bob & Taryn made their competition debut! We were so proud :). Bob did fabulous work, but pulled up lame the next day. Fingers are crossed that it is not something too serious, but cruciate ligament has been suggested :( :(. Best wishes Bobby boy:

 

The following weekend we attended a normal ANKC trial, and by this time Sen was with the (concentrate) program. There were no crazy run-offs on this weekend, and in 10 minutes she finished her AD and JDX titles. The JDX title had been quick - 4 passes in two weekends and the other from Albany last November (her first JDX run). The AD title was ANOTHER story (two passes at last year's States and then the looooong wait.....).

 

I have to say that I am happy with her work, and once she gets more exposure to competition environments I'm sure she will settle down. Sen now gets to "rest" until the end of the year (+/- a run or two at the end of May). We started our relaxation with some Perth tourism, and the princess had much training in inner city life:

 

 

Sen's Western Classic 2014

Was a hoot!

Her focus suffered a lot from her total lack of attending competitions (not since Nov 2013), but some great work was done. We had a blast in teams with Corgie Tobie, Papillon Spirit and super dog Astro - thanks guys!. Our team showed 'em how jumping was done and pulled off a 3rd place in Teams Jumping:

Sen's runs were pretty much chaos - except for this great Open Jumping run, her first JDO Q!

Some coaching, at last!

At the end of last year I took Sen to Perth for a seminar by former US world agility team coach Stacy Peardot-Goudy. Below you can see the videos of our work before and after Stacy. It is amazing the improvement you can get from a little calibration. How fantastic it would be to be able to do something like this regularly, not just every other year.

Tuesday night:




Thursday night:

Sayonara 2013

And may I say from a vet bills cost p.o.v. a very good riddance. My main hope for next year is that dog health in the household improves.

 

So brings the close of our first year of Australian agility. I am for the most part pleased with our results. Sen would no doubt show improvement if we had a chance to go more often to compete, or at least to dog-rich training environments.

Results:
Bigi
15 clear runs from 26 starts (65% Q rate)
Winner, WA State Championship Novice Jumping (300)
ANKC Agility Dog title
ANKC Jumping Dog title
ADAA Australian Agility Dog title
+3 passes towards the next ADAA title and 1 ADAA teams pass

The bad news here is that this was more than likely (we can probably say certainly) his last competition year. Next year we will start to compete in Rally Obedience so that he has something to work towards.

Sen
11 clear runs from 57 starts (19% Q rate)
From these stats we can make two observations:
A. That is a lot of runs, too many, &
B. These are crap stats.

ANKC Jumping Dog title (in straight runs - fabulous!)
2013 Western Classic Novice Jumping Champion (300)
ADAA Australian Agility Dog title
+1 ADAA teams pass
+2 ANKC AD passes

I am pretty happy with her work, she just needs to settle down and think a little more. I am still adjusting to handling Sen, who is a different style (one could say opposite extreme) to Bigi. Fingers crossed she keeps her health so that I may have at least a few years of fun.

The New Year's Eve pies are sliced this way:

Sen's results:                                                                            Bigi's results:

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!